Social Media Marketing Basics

The key to effective social media marketing is exactly the same as the key to effective content marketing: to provide value. Unfortunately, many companies don't know how to do this, which is why social media is poorly managed.

If you take a look at the social media pages of a typical local B2B company, you will see that they tend to have rather uninspiring and boring statuses and posts.

For example, the following.

"See why our contact management solution is the best in the industry!"
And
"Order our EPOS system today to start making your customers better!"

This is just blatant self-promotion, not interesting self-promotion. Ask yourself this: why would anyone be interested in such a thing? What will they get out of reading your posts? One of the most important questions to ask yourself when looking at your social media and content is: "Would you read it? If they don't read it, then you need to do something to make it more interesting.

In other words, social media today needs to provide some purpose to the viewer. It can be interesting, fun, useful, or stimulating. Stimulating social media can be especially effective. If you look at Instagram, there are many accounts of people wearing nice clothes, posing to show off their rippling muscles, or showing off their wealthy lifestyle.

Also, many travel photos are posted showing beautiful mountain ranges and sunsets. Why do these work? People look at those channels, feel inspired, relive their lives, and enjoy fantasizing about how they would like to live like this too. And if you follow that account, you will be shown many of the same inspiring posts, and you can keep dreaming. If you follow that account, you will be shown many of the same exciting posts and you can keep dreaming.

An example of a popular Facebook page is "IFL Science". This page contains links to articles with very eye-catching titles, resulting in a large number of likes and "shares" as a result. On Twitter, accounts run by personal brands are the best, offering insights into daily life, jokes, insider tips and more, making fans feel as if they really know them.

Want to make a splash on Pinterest? Then why not create a board that showcases your life hacks? Or how about showcasing some great clothing choices? Or workout inspiration, etc. The goal is to provide real value, and the best way to determine if it's working is to ask yourself, would people be disappointed if I stopped posting to my account? Not only your blog, but also your social media channels?

Your social media should stand on its own and be something that people enjoy. This will help you gain followers and shares, and get people to visit your site and buy your products.
Again, the key is to post regularly and to keep the content consistently on theme.

You can create a blog about fitness, but if you don't continually post on social media about your love of gardening, people will get bored and leave. How often should you post? Ideally, the more often you post, the better. Especially on sites like Facebook, where each post is only visible to a small percentage of your followers, it is generally recommended to post several times a day.

Other tips for mastering social media

Provide value to a boring niche.

You may be wondering how you can provide such fun and engaging value when you run a website about life insurance. What do I need to do on Instagram or Pinterest?

The answer is to consider the value proposition and audience, not the content of your service. The goal is to post things that are relevant and of interest to the same demographic.

For example, let's say you create an Instagram account that showcases ways to spend more time with your family. This has a very broad appeal, but it also relates directly to life insurance.

People who want to be better moms and dads will follow your Instagram, which is in the same spirit as your business, and if they hear you, they can recommend X for life insurance.

Likewise, you can do the same thing on your Pinterest account. How about showing your family ways to save money? You can show savings tips, budgeting tips, etc. and use them to promote life insurance as the best financial option or your website as the best place to learn about life insurance.

Target a Specific Audience

Another important tip is to think about your audience and who they are. If you want people to share your post (which is the best way to make sure that your post reaches a large number of people), you need to make sure that you are targeting a specific audience. This is important, because if you try to reach too wide a range of people, you will end up appealing to no one.

A lot of people make this mistake when they post "how to train abs". They think they need to appeal to everyone and end up with content that is safe and generic. However, content works best when it is targeted to a specific type of person. This has to do with the psychology of sharing. Why do we share content? There are two reasons: to express ourselves and to communicate.

We communicate by sharing things that we think will be of interest to people we know. For example, if you see an article about "telecommuting ravages your brain," you would share it with your friend Bill, who works from home, as a cheeky joke, as a way to improve his telecommuting, or simply as a way to show that you are thinking of them.

And if you're a telecommuter yourself, you might post it to express your own feelings about telecommuting or to help others understand you better. But in both cases, realize that the post is only effective because it is specific to people who work from home.

By being very specific, it may seem like you're excluding potential customers, but it makes it much easier to market to a specific type of person who might buy from you. To make this happen, you need to take the time to profile who that person is. How old is he or she? What is their gender? What are their hobbies? What websites does he or she visit?

We'll explain why this is important later.

Create a strong brand

Once you've decided how you're going to provide value, whether it's by sharing blog posts or posting images, you then need to create a strong brand that has good name recognition and neatly ties your social media channels to your website. It is important that when someone sees your post, they will know that it is from the same website that they saw the other day.

To do this, have a good logo and use that as your profile picture or cover image for each account. Likewise, try to use the same name whenever possible. Another tip is to integrate your social media and website as closely as possible. It takes time to build momentum in social media, but one way to do this is to add social media buttons to your website so that people can check Facebook directly from your website.

Ideally, every time someone visits your website, you'll gain a new follower, who will be more likely to see and share your future posts, and more visitors will become your followers.
It is also important to ask people to follow you on social networking sites; if you have a YouTube channel, don't be shy to ask your viewers to follow you on Twitter and explain why.

Similarly, at the end of your blog post, why not ask your readers to share the article with their friends using the handy share button? It is also a good idea to integrate different posts to save time and provide as much content as possible on each channel. For example, you can post all your tweets to your Facebook page, or make sure that new YouTube videos are automatically shared on Twitter.

Interact
Remember that social media is only a communication tool. Don't forget that social media is a communication tool. One of the best ways to get people to engage with you is to actually have a conversation.

If you've ever used Instagram, you know all too well the joy of discovering that someone is following you. Likewise, it's nice to be complimented on a good photo! In the same way, it's also nice to be praised. This makes you want to check out the person's channel, and in many cases, you will follow them. Thus, take your time in posting, and of course, make sure that you actually respond to people.

Holding contests or surveying your audience is also a great way to increase engagement and get a sense of what your followers want. A good example of a contest is the "Like" contest. If you get more than ____ likes, you can give your followers a free gift. This will not only help you get more shares and likes, but it will also help you get more followers. This will not only help you get more shares and likes, but it is also a great way to thank your fans.